Retail Trade: Food

(asked on 10th February 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the high fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) regulations, whether HFSS products are permitted to be displayed where a premise has a dedicated exit.


Answered by
Maggie Throup Portrait
Maggie Throup
This question was answered on 21st February 2022

The Regulations describe where qualifying businesses must not place specified food inside a physical store. Businesses in scope of the Regulations with stores that have 185.8 square metres (2,000 square feet) or greater of ‘relevant floor area’ will be in scope of the location promotion restrictions.

The relevant floor area excludes areas used mainly for the preparation or sale of food intended for immediate consumption whether on or off the premises (including, for example, a coffee shop or a canteen). Many seating areas of a café, for example, run by the business or a business other than the business primarily responsible for managing and operating the store may not count towards the relevant floor space of an area. This will need to be assessed by the enforcement authority when assessing the premises.

A ‘main customer route’ takes its natural meaning as one of the main routes a customer is expected to take when moving around the store, whereby a customer is directed through the store by passages between aisles. The purpose of this definition is to try not to capture island-type displays, as islands typically do not have an 'aisle-end' as no one side displays prominence in the same way that a typical long rectangular aisle does. An aisle end is defined as a display at the end of (but not in) an aisle, where the aisle end is adjacent to a main customer route through the store, or a separate structure (such as an island bin, free-standing unit (for example fridges/freezers), side stack or clip strip) connected or adjacent to, or within 50cm of, such an aisle end.

Businesses in scope of the Regulations must not place specified food in store at any area within 2 metres of a designated queuing area or a queue management system, other than within an aisle. Specified food cannot be placed at the end of an aisle and/or on an island type structure within 2 metres of a checkout facility or a designated queuing area.

A covered external area means a covered area outside and connected to a store’s main shopping area, through which the public passes to enter the main shopping area for example a foyer, lobby or vestibule.

Businesses in scope of the locations restrictions are prohibited from placing specified food within a certain distance of their store entrance or entrances. These restrictions do not apply to an ‘exit only’ exit from where customers cannot or should not enter into the store.

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